


New Years Resolution

by Slanguage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cute, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, New Years, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the third New Years in a row without Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Years Resolution

They were in the wrong towns, at the wrong times. It was another New Years coming around the bend, the clock ticking just past eleven in the evening now and, for the third time since Cas decided to take the full ride to Columbia and never come back, Dean was alone on New Years.

He didn’t mind Cas’s choice, usually. His boyfriend was extremely happy being a nerd in the Big Apple, doing what anthropologists do, learning new things and navigating the Ivy League or whatever. Dean had grown up in a life where Sam’s dreams were similar, so it was like he was seeing a flash-forward of his little brother’s life through his boyfriend, even though Sammy wasn’t even graduating until May and not packing his bags for California until August.

Another year had gone by. And Dean was still in his parents’ house, working toward a degree that he wanted and a future he had imagined at his father’s co-owned garage, alone for all but the college holidays, and he was grinning and bearing it with a smile he knew everyone was expecting him to wear.

But it was getting harder and harder to smile lately.

Dean knew that, eventually, most of the people he knew would move on. Jo was planning on working as a cop in Hastings, where her father had worked. Ash was at MIT and would probably be in the Secret Service or NASA or wherever incredibly smart computer engineers ended up before they were thirty. Sam was going to California and Ruby would probably be crawling back into the hole that she climbed out of. Hell, even Meg, Cas’s bitch best friend, was studying to be a nurse in the Windy City. Dean wanted to be a hometown mechanic. His boyfriend wanted to travel the world digging up dinosaur bones and surviving Jurassic Park or whatever Cas would end up doing with himself after grad school.

 _Grad school_. Dean could barely make it through his junior year.

So yeah. He was feeling a little bummed out.

Hell, even _Garth_ had a plan. And, back in the day, Dean had thought that Garth was going to fail out of fifth grade since the kid couldn’t stop daydreaming about the freaking butterfly garden that sat just outside of the classroom window.

For not the first time, Dean wondered if he should have aimed higher. If he should have made bigger goals for himself back when he was getting Cs in high school while his boyfriend graduated top of the class. Maybe, if he had pushed himself a little harder, he wouldn’t feel stuck. Like the life he had dreamed up for himself since he was just a little kid wasn’t good enough anymore.

Dean reached up and knocked himself hard on the forehead with his fist.

“What are you doing?” Jo demanded over the music, slumping down on the couch. She was holding a non-alcoholic beverage crafted by Dean’s mother at the station in the kitchen where she stood, hands on her hips, squinting at everyone who dared approach the punch bowl. Mary Winchester was nothing if not consistent, because she hadn’t let Dean drink anything she didn’t know the nature of until she didn’t know that he was lying about going to fraternity parties.

Dean didn’t know what was in purple nurples, but it was potentially deadly. He still had trouble remembering that party.

“Nothing,” Dean replied to Jo indignantly, crossing his arms stubbornly over his chest and gazing out at the party. It was going as a party of close friends being supervised while under the age of twenty-one was expected to be going—slightly boringly. Sam and Dean invited both of their friend groups, which means that Dean ended up with two and Sam rounded down at about twenty.

Jo, sensing the problem, raised her eyebrows.

“Are you sulking about Cas again?” she demanded.

“He isn’t even texting me back,” Dean couldn’t help but to complain, scowling down at his phone. “It’s past midnight where he is, but he didn’t even text me to say happy New Years.”

“Maybe he’s busy.”

“Maybe,” Dean muttered back, finger tapping anxiously at his phone.

Really, that was what he was the most terrified of. He didn’t mind Cas having other friends—he really wasn’t that controlling, or controlling _at all_ —but the thought of Cas being so busy doing things with the people around him that he forgot about Dean completely, even in the back of his mind?

Yeah. That one stung.

“Cheer up,” Jo told him, poking him in the arm. “I’m sure he’ll text soon. Maybe you should start making small talk at the party you’re co-hosting?”

“I don’t know half of these people,” Dean pointed out, frowning into the room. “Actually, I don’t know more than three fourths of them.”

“You know me and Benny,” Jo pointed out, raising an eyebrow. Jo went to KU with him, the only other person he knew from high school that did, and there Dean had met Benny who had, in turn, met Jo, and the heart-eyes had flown. Admittedly, sometimes, when Dean was hanging out with them, there was a tight burn in his chest, an aching reminder. Dean didn’t know if that was what he wanted tonight, but it didn’t look like he had any other choice.

The only other people he knew in the room were Sam and his crazy whore somewhat-girlfriend Ruby.

Dean shivered involuntarily just at the thought of her.

“Fine,” Dean replied, letting Jo tug him physically off of the couch, sighing his impatience and drama nonetheless. “He’s probably just busy.”

“You’ll hear from him soon,” Jo assured him, and then dragged him into the throngs of people.

*

As it turned out, Dean shouldn’t have gotten quite so optimistic. Five minutes came, and then went. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Thirty-five. And there was still no text message from Cas, no response. No missed calls, no nothing. There was a horrible bad feeling curling in his chest like the coiling of a snake restricting the air to his lungs, and he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to escape from the party, to lock himself in his room where no one would bother him, but Jo didn’t let him out of her sight the entire time, knowing with her best friend senses that this was bad and not letting him go off and sulk.

“Come on, brother, stop making that face,” Benny drawled before taking a long sip of Dean’s mom’s punch. He made an appreciative face at the glass before turning back to Dean and frowning, remembering his mission. “Pouting ain’t gonna do you no good.”

“I’m not pouting,” Dean insisted, frowning deeper.

Benny rolled his eyes, but he looked sympathetic. “I know this ain’t easy—”

“It’s not,” Dean agreed, the point he felt like he had been trying to make for the last three years. “It’s never been easy, not since we graduated. And that’s fine, I don’t need it to be as easy as it was in high school, because this _isn’t_ high school, but I—”

Dean felt the words crawling up his throat disguised as tears. He looked away sharply.

Jo was on the other side of the room, so Benny took the opportunity to lean in slightly closer and asked, “You what?”

“I didn’t think he would _forget_ about me, alright?” Dean demanded, swallowing hard, wanting to be firmly shut behind a closed door more than ever. “I knew it would be hard but I didn’t think it would end like this, you know? I didn’t think that it would just _stop_. If I’d have known . . .”

And that part was what Dean hated the most about himself, because he would never admit that, if he got the chance to do it all again, he wouldn’t choose differently. He would still yearn for these three years, even if it meant that he would be standing alone with this helpless feeling in his chest on the night of the year where people are supposed to let go and begin again.

It was the time people were supposed to fly high. Dean was already crashing and burning.

“You know what?” Dean interrupted before Benny could say anything, even if the other youth’s eyebrows were furrowed in concern. “Never mind, alright? Just—never mind.”

“Dean,” Benny tried to say, but Dean was already elbowing his way through the crowd, heading for the stairs, not caring about the complaints that would await him after the fact, not caring about being called out for abandoned his half-party. All he cared about was the phone in his pocket, and how it hadn’t shown a notification from Cas since yesterday morning.

Dean wanted to slam the door behind him, but he didn’t.

*

Ten minutes until midnight, Sam appeared, knocking on the other side of the door.

“Dean, seriously, come out,” Sam pestered him, the bitch face conveyed in tone alone. “I know you’re having a moment, but ten minutes, Dean. Just until the ball drops. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Go away, Sam.”

“No,” Sam declared, knocking on the door even harder. “Dean, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous.”

“Then _ten minutes_.”

Dean’s head pounded. He longed for the peaceful four years he’d had before his mother had brought home Sam from the hospital.

“I’m not feeling well.”

Sam’s voice suddenly became sad, understanding. “I know, Dean. But this isn’t going to help.”

Sam might be right, but Dean still had his own crooked justifications.

“Please, Dean. For me? For _Mom_? She’s worried. I had to stop her from coming up here herself.”

Damn Sam. Damn him and his guilt trips that always freaking worked.

Dean threw the door open, nailing Sam in the face and sending his gangly little brother a few steps back, stalking out into the hallway with fists clenched. Dean pointed a finger at Sam when he straightened up, scowling as he rubbed at his nose.

“Ten minutes,” Dean growled.

“Fine,” Sam replied back in a similar tone, his eyes narrowed, before he turned and stalked away, calling over his shoulder, “You won’t regret it, you absolute overgrown baby.”

“Bitch,” Dean muttered, glaring at Sam’s back, but he did as he had promised, knowing that, despite the fact his heart was potentially going to break in a few hours or days or weeks, he could handle another ten minutes of fake smiling for the sake of the year reset. Dean barely made it to the bottom of the stairs before his mom was in front of him, looking worried.

“Is something wrong?” she demanded, reaching up and feeling his temperature. “Are you sick? You didn’t look good when you started stomping up the stairs.”

Dean sighed, backing out of his mom’s grip. She let him.

“It’s about Cas,” he told her, and her face smoothed out into something like pity seconds after her lips twitched, which Dean didn’t understand but genuinely didn’t care enough to look deeper into.

“What about him?” she asked, still on high-mom-alert.

Dean opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. And then closed it. He glanced down at his phone, which was still clutched in his fist. Nothing. She followed his gaze and sighed, reaching out and grabbing up his hands, squeezing.

“Dean,” his mother murmured, raising her eyebrows. “You always over-think things.”

“Mom,” Dean started to protest, but she just shook her head, expression stern.

“Dean,” she replied, in the same tone of voice, her lips twitching into a smile because the move never failed to make Dean roll his eyes, as he did immediately. “Trust me on this, okay? I know what’s best when it comes to my boys.”

“You let Sam invite Ruby,” Dean pointed out.

“She’s not past redeeming,” she tried to argue back, and then swatted Dean away, pushing him back into the fray. “Go. Socialize. Only a few more minutes until 2015.”

“Yay,” Dean replied sarcastically, but she was already gone.

*

Two minutes, and Jo couldn’t stop glancing anxiously at her watch.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dean demanded impatiently after the thirtieth time, when it stopped being amusing and started getting pretty irritating. He slapped his hand over her wrist and she jumped, looking up at him with wide eyes, like she was guilty of something. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you really that anxious for 2014 to be over?”

“Uh,” she replied. “Yes?”

Benny sipped at his punch.

Dean, eyes narrowed suspiciously, let go of her wrist.

She looked at the time again.

*

The countdown began for a minute till, and Jo looked nervously at Benny.

“I know,” he replied.

Dean just stared at them, not understanding.

*

 _And goodbye to this year_ , Dean thought to himself, leaning against the wall and watching the numbers flash by on the television screen, the taped crowd of Times Square cheering recklessly.

The door flew open, slamming against the wall loudly. Everyone turned to look, surprised.

Dean’s was the only heart that stopped beating.

Cas was standing in the doorway, wild-eyed and out of breath, decked out in a lopsided scarf and a half-buttoned winter jacket, one of his shoes untied. He stumbled into the house, letting the door shut loudly behind him as his eyes frantically searched the crowd of unfamiliar faces. And then he saw Dean, and Dean saw him, and Dean couldn’t breathe.

Cas started walking toward him, beaming. Dean considered pinching himself to see if it was a dream but figured he didn’t want to wake up until the good stuff was over and done with.

Cas whipped off the scarf and the coat in the time it took him to cross the room, and then he was standing in front of Dean and he was smiling, an inch taller than he had been when he left and beaming at Dean _in real life_ , and Dean couldn’t breathe, and he might’ve been crying or about to, he couldn’t really tell, but _damn it_ , this felt _real_. He had a feeling it was. And that made it even better.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas whispered, his eyes soft.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean replied, voice choked.

“I missed you,” Cas told him.

“I missed you more,” Dean murmured.

“How did you,” Dean started to ask, realizing, but Cas shook his head.

“Dean?” Cas asked, grinning.

“Kiss me on midnight?” Cas asked.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean responded, but he was smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.

Dean rushed forward, taking the man he loved the most in his arms, and kissed him hard as the cheers rose up and fireworks from neighbors outside started going off, the new year presenting its first few seconds, but Dean didn’t stop kissing until he ran out of air, until he felt like the beating of Cas’s heart under his fingertips would make his boyfriend’s heart beat straight out of his chest. Dean pulled back just far enough to see Cas’s eyes, those eyes he missed the most of all the things in the world because there was nothing quite like them anywhere, and Cas beamed up at him, all rosy-cheeked and eyes dancing with excitement.

“How long were you planning this, you absolute dickhead?” Dean demanded.

Cas laughed. “About a month. Your mom, Jo, and Sam helped out.”

Dean raised his eyebrows.

“My flight got delayed,” Cas huffed, shaking his head. “A day. A _whole day_. I just got in about two hours ago, and I drove here as fast I could without crashing the car, and I was so nervous I wasn’t going to make it on time even though this was the last time I could get back to Kansas, and I—”

“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Dean admitted, lowly, the way he only ever could with Cas. Cas’s rant stopped immediately, his face falling into something like astonishment and adoration as he reached up and held Dean’s face in his hands, pressing his warm body even closer.

“About you?” Cas murmured, and then smiled lovingly. “Never.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” Dean told him, ducking his forehead against Cas’s and closing his eyes, actually afraid he was going to start crying like a goddamn chick flick leading lady. Cas nudged his head against Dean’s softly, his fingers stroking over the skin of Dean’s cheeks reverently, making a blush rise past Dean’s neck, making his face feel too hot.

“I love you,” Cas murmured, ducking forward to press his lips against Dean’s. “I made a New Years resolution on the way over here—I decided that we would never have another one apart, ever. No matter what. New Years, and every day in between, I will be there whenever I can, because I never want to be without you for this long ever again.”

“I love you, too,” Dean murmured and, yeah, he was totally about to cry. “Damn it, I missed you, I—don’t fucking try to surprise me next time, alright, you fucking asshole? You nearly broke my fucking heart.”

“Obviously,” Cas replied, tapping Dean’s cheek. “I haven’t heard you curse so much since that night with the thing.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up.

“Stop thinking about it in the middle of a party, Dean, that’s disgusting,” Cas told him, but he was laughing. Dean could feel the noise in his chest, under his fingertips. It made him feel crazy. It made him feel like he could liftoff straight there, like one of those angels his mom’s always believed in, wings and all. He felt like he could gather Cas in his arms and they could fly away and they could finally find the stasis they had been trying to feel out for the last couple of years.

Yet again—things were working out just fine with both of their feet on the ground.

Dean reached over and pinched himself, hard. He winced.

“Dean,” Cas admonished, but he was smirking.

“Shut up,” Dean muttered, grinning at him before pulling him in for another kiss, burying his hands in Cas’s wind-mussed hair.

From a few feet away in the room, clear as a bell, Sam snorted and remarked, “ _Finally_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Years, everyone! Hello, 2015!
> 
> xo Kay
> 
> My tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com


End file.
